To no-one's surprise, this week’s tobacco tax rises were welcomed by ASH. True to form, however, they still weren't satisfied.
There was a 'lack of action on disposable vapes', they complained, and a 'failure to reinstate funding to help smokers to quit and prevent youth uptake'.
They were also 'disappointed that the Chancellor did not accept our recommendation to change from RPI [Retail Price Index] to average earnings as the foundation for the tobacco tax escalator'.
I wrote about this 'recommendation' a few weeks ago and I was right, I think, to question it because, if the forecasts are right, by the end of the year inflation will have fallen below earnings growth (where it generally resides) and that, I think, is one of the reasons ASH is pressing for change.
But that's not what I wanted to write about today, although it is ASH-related.
In January 2003 it was announced that:
Clive Bates, the highly respected director of Action and Smoking on Health (ASH), is to leave the charity after five years in March to take a job as a government adviser.
It is therefore 20 years ago (this month) that Bates left ASH to join Tony Blair’s Strategy Unit and I can’t let the moment pass without comment.
According to Campaign:
The news of Bates' departure emerges in the week that tobacco advertising ends in the UK. He had campaigned tirelessly for the ban.
Indeed he had, but despite that he seemed quite a good sport, prompting me to write, a decade later:
I have always had a soft spot for Clive, even when he was director of ASH.
By all accounts some of his predecessors were humourless zealots driven by an ideological hatred of Big Tobacco and anyone who dared to challenge the new anti-smoking orthodoxy ...
Clive was never like that. Unlike many people in public health he's had a varied career outside that cosseted industry. He's not obsessed to the point of lunacy by smoking or anything else.
Most important, he has a sense of humour.
This included contributing to the 'What's My Vice?' feature in the Forest magazine Free Choice, and when he left ASH, in March 2003, we sent him flowers. It was the least we could do.
Our magnanimity (never reciprocated, alas!) continued in the Guardian, of all places:
Simon Clark, Bates's opposite number at the pro-choice, pro-smoking group Forest, describes Bates's tenure at ASH as "a breath of fresh air" after the "antics" of his predecessors.
“Funnily enough, I'd written an affectionate profile of Clive before Christmas for our new website, in which I said it was time for him to move on and that he'd make an excellent New Labour spin doctor,” says Clark. “I shall now have to rewrite it.”
But enough about Bates, who is now a saintly ambassador for tobacco harm reduction (vaping in particular). What about his successor?
Deborah Arnott was 48 when she replaced Clive as director of ASH, so you do the maths. I'm not being ageist (I'm 64 myself!) but it does beg the question: could retirement be looming for this long-serving titan of tobacco control?
I'm sure Deborah would love to be at the helm if and when England is officially designated 'smoke free', but the 2030 target is seven years away, added to which the chances of achieving a smoking rate of five per cent or less, even by then, is optimistic.
I'm wondering therefore if the Government's new Tobacco Control Plan, to be announced "in the coming weeks", could turn out to be Deborah’s swan song.
For years the holy grail for Arnott and ASH has been the imposition of a ‘polluter pays’ levy on the tobacco industry with a view to funding more smoking cessation services and anti-smoking initiatives.
Figures mentioned have ranged from £105m to £700m annually, which would keep a whole new generation of tobacco control campaigners in work for years to come.
Like Bates and the ban on tobacco advertising, Deborah has campaigned tirelessly for a tobacco levy so I imagine that’s the principal legacy she is hoping to leave before she departs, stage left.
Another legacy she may be hoping to leave is plain packaging - and I’m not talking about tobacco, which is in the bag already, but e-cigarettes.
Yes, ASH wants all vapes (not just the disposable kind) to be sold in standardised packaging, just like tobacco. (Chris Snowdon explains all here: 'Sweet Jesus, not plain packaging again!'.)
To be clear, I’ve no reason to suppose Arnott's retirement is imminent, but it didn't go unnoticed that in 2021 Hazel Cheeseman stepped up from director of policy to deputy chief executive.
I may be wrong but I don’t recall ASH ever having a deputy CEO (or deputy director) before, so it wouldn’t surprise me if she is being lined up for the top job when Deborah does call it a day.
Anyway, I'll write a more fulsome 'tribute' in May, which I think marks the 20th anniversary of her long reign.
After 20 years on the frontline of the war on tobacco she deserves no less!